Cranmer, S. R., and Chandran, B. D. G. 2010, "A Summary of the Evidence in Favor of the Idea that the Solar Wind is Accelerated by Waves and/or Turbulence," SHINE 2010 Workshop, Santa Fe, New Mexico, July 26-30, 2010.

ABSTRACT:

Despite more than a half-century of study, the basic physical processes that are responsible for accelerating the solar wind are not known (or at least not universally agreed upon). The mechanism that has been studied the most appears to be the dissipation of waves and turbulent eddies. Roberts (2010) presented a series of arguments why these processes may not be as effective as has been assumed in the past. In this presentation, we attempt to counter these arguments and demonstrate that there may still be hope for the wave/turbulence explanation. A combination of observational and model-based evidence will be brought to bear in order to show that the most likely strength of Alfven waves in coronal holes is sufficient to provide both: (1) substantial wave-pressure acceleration in high-speed streams, and (2) sufficient coronal heating, via MHD turbulence seeded by partial reflection, to heat and accelerate open-field regions of the corona that connect to the solar wind.

The full PDF version (1.0 MB) of this poster is available.

ONLINE DATA: The information used to generate the plots in the section of the poster titled "Are the MHD fluctuations undergoing turbulent cascade and dissipation?" are in this directory. See the "readme.txt" file for details.